Does total sweetheart Priscelia Chan have a dark side?

If you ask us, Priscelia Chan is the sweetest actress on the Hill.

Her WhatsApp messages are full of smiley and heart emoticons. She calls everybody her “angel”. And her Instagram pictures mostly feature flowers, latte art and her cat, Twinkle. If Priscelia Chan were a cupcake, she’d be vanilla with buttercream frosting and rainbow sprinkles.

She’s so gosh-darn nice, she wouldn’t even let us help her fasten her strappy heels before posing for these photos (“Those hands are meant for writing,” she said).

Chan is the polar opposite of the characters she has been playing of late, such as the venom-spitting villain in The Journey: A Voyage, which earned her a Rocket Award at this year’s Star Awards; or the character of a sultry 70’s nightclub hostess, Helen Wee, whom she plays in Mata Mata: A New Era.

“It’s only when you start being bitchy that people start noticing you,” said the 35-year-old, who also reminded us that she had played doormat and goody-two-shoe roles for over 10 years before her transition into rebel woman du jour.

It’s fitting, then, that we were shooting these photos and having a chat at the nail parlour-by-day, bar-by-night establishment called Jekyll & Hyde, because Chan is unquestionably a well-adjusted Dr Jekyll and her characters are subversive Mr Hydes, but does she have a darker “id” lurking under that pristine “ego”?

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT

We find it hard to believe that Chan could ever be anything but sweetness and light. But, she claims to have her moments.

“My dark side is very moody and quiet. Alan (Tern, her husband) always says, ‘You know, I’d rather you talk.’ But a lot of women are like that. When I’m quiet, he’ll be like, ‘Oh, it’s raining’. And it’s not raining outside — it’s raining inside. But I’m not aggressive — I’m just reflecting,” she said.

That’s as far as Chan will go in real life, but on the job, she flirts with the dark side by playing characters such as Helen Wee, whom she called “a very passionate, sensual woman”. “I did feel a bit sexier when I was playing her,” she mused. “Maybe it was the excitement of, ‘I know I shouldn’t do that but I did’.”

Even so, the dark side has no hold on her because she has seen it all before. “When you’re young, you tend to think the dark side is quite sexy because there are some things you are not sure of yet. Kids nowadays still think being emo is sexy. They put up their emo pictures on Instagram and write emo stuff. I’m like, ‘I’ve been there, done that.’ I’m glad I grew out of that,” Chan said.

“I think I’m sexier than in the past, because I think it comes with maturity,” she added. “The best thing is, I married my best friend, with whom I can totally be myself, with no secrets. I have nothing to hide. It’s total freedom.”

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE

Chan’s positive outlook didn’t come easy. “I’ve kept my dark side under control for the past nine years, after my mum passed away,” she said.

Before that, Chan said, she was “super meticulous and very Singaporean” (“‘At this age, I must achieve this’,”); but losing her mother made her realise that there were just some things in life that you can’t really plan for or control.

“Life is so short and it’s never the way you want it to be, so we just have to choose happiness,” she said.

Thanks to that philosophy, a little rain doesn’t get her down. “When you decide to be happy, you choose to be more observant. You look at the genuine smiles from your friends; a nice cup of coffee; even nice, rainy weather. If you’re grateful for the little things, you realise it’s easy to be happy,” she said.

“When you start to compare: ‘She wears more beautiful clothes than me. She won more awards than me. She’s taller than me. She’s got bigger boobs than me’… When you become envious easily, you’ll lose yourself. If you have all these trapped feelings inside, people can feel it. And do you realise that people avoid negative people? The funniest thing is you think people don’t know, but it’s so obvious.”

It’s not always easy to choose happiness, of course, but experience is a great teacher. “With maturity, you grow stronger and more confident. And the beautiful thing is that you don’t even know it has happened. Having obstacles along the way is not a bad thing — it grooms you. You blossom into a more resilient flower with more character, with more stories to tell,” Chan said.

“What I like about it is that those stories mould me so I can create more dimensions for my characters. I like dark roles; I like grey roles, because I think humans are all grey. We’re not so clean. And I’m not really that clean either. I just choose more white and grey than black, that’s all. The more mature I’ve become, the less things get to me.”

By the time she’s 70, she’ll be really happy, we pointed out. She broke out in peals of laughter. “Oh, I hope I’m just a happy, bogay (toothless) old woman who still keeps laughing!”

Catch Mata Mata: A New Era starting Sept 1 at 8pm on MediaCorp TV Channel 5.

See what went down behind the scenes at our photo shoot with more photos and videos at http://www.toggle.sg/TAP

CREDITS

Photography: Jason Ho

Makeup: Kenneth Lee (96943670)

Hair: Teddy Cheah, Monsoon Novena

Dresses: Roberto Cavalli, B1-11 The Shoppes At Marina Bay Sands

Special thanks to Jekyll & Hyde.